Making war against the Nawab they had personally installed only five years earlier was not only a political embarrassment for the Company; it was a financial disaster: ‘The Company was sinking under the burden of war,’ wrote Luke Scrafton, ‘and was obliged to borrow great sums of money from their servants at eight per cent interest, and even with that assistance were obliged to send their ships half-loaded to Europe [as they did not have spare bullion to buy the Indian goods to send to London].’
